The present invention generally relates to the field of telecommunications and more particularly, is directed to a method and apparatus for automatically transmitting a message to a telephone terminal.
Over the last several years, there has been a marked increase in the level of sophistication and complexity of electronic telephone exchange systems. In addition, telephone sets have been developed which are far superior in terms of capability to those previously known in the art. Such functions are touch-tone and multi-function telephone sets are not commonplace and are continuing to be improved. Present day telephone sets and electronic exchange systems represent a substantial improvement over such devices known in the prior art. There is still a need, however, for further improvement. For example, it is not possible to make a telephone call to a telephone set which is presently being used. The calling party merely receives a busy signal alerting him that the telephone set which he is trying to reach is presently in use. In matters of great urgency, it is necessary to be able to communicate with a telephone set even though it may be in use. Moreover, in routine situations, it is often convenient to pass a message to the user of a telephone set such that the user may receive important information timely. In telephone sets known in the prior art, such a feature is not available.
Present-day telephone sets are further deficient in that they provide no means of communicating to a calling party that the person he wishes to reach is out of the office or away from his telephone for an extended period of time. Of course such devices as automatic telephone answering machines are available. However, such machines are rather expensive and are prone to the user forgetting to turn them on prior to leaving his office or home. Accordingly, there is a need in the art to provide a telephone set which can automatically inform the calling party that the person whom he wishes to reach is not presently available. Moreover, such telephone sets should have the capability of ease of use while at the same time providing the user with substantial flexibility in programming messages for automatic transmission to a calling party. As mentioned above, automatic answering machines are presently available and do provide a useful service. Such service, however, is limited for the above-mentioned reasons and also for the reason that they usually cannot be set up to provide more than one or two messages for playback to a calling party. Usually, such messages cannot readily be changed, thereby, causing the telephone user to always rely on a somewhat general and nonspecific message. Such messages usually provide little, if any, accurate information as to the present whereabouts or expected time of return of the user.
Though voice store and forward systems are known in the art, such systems are rather complicated and expensive to implement. These systems usually include a voice signal memory which records the voice of the calling party for playback to the person being called at some predetermined time. The deficiencies in such a system are apparent. For example, there is usually no way to know the ideal time which the recorded voice signal should be played back to the called party. Moreover, the amount of memory required to store voice signals is substantial, thereby greatly reducing the number of messages that can be stored in any given system.
Accordingly, there is a great need in the art for a system which can be used to efficiently, rapidly and reliably transmit a message to a telephone when the telephone is in use or when the telephone cannot be answered.